Just a reminder

I love how the propagandists just keep beating the same drum after the Biden administration has constructed a ceasefire deal which has received unanimous UN Security Council support, and did appear to be moving forward until about 14 hours ago. (Edit: It might still, that's not over yet.)

It's almost like if the US just turns its back on Israel, we'd lose our leverage to press a negotiated agreement, which would surely not end with Israel digging in their heels even further. (/s) It's almost like geopolitics are - wait for it - complicated.

Second Edit: Let's also not forget that Israel is a nuclear power. What do you think happens when Israel's back is against the wall, they're running out of conventional weapons, and Iran and/or other groups decide to take advantage?

Both sides do suck. but only one is trying to get an orange dictator elected. I'm still voting Biden. Democrats aren't perfect but it's the only choice we have.

The only person who can so militantly cling to the idea that both sides are exactly the same is the person for whom the outcomes are exactly the same.

IE the person who needs to do a lot more shutting the fuck up and listening to the people for whom this shit is life and death.

I do think there is a constructive way to talk about how both sides accommodate the interests of the ruling class. We are at the point where our choices are corporate shills and fascist corporate shills. I am going to vote for the non-fascists every time, but don't tell me I am harming the conversation when I expect the corporate shills to be better too.

Sure, both sides are not the same. But the "good" side is still part of the system that allows the "bad" side to exist.

So by all means, vote for the party that will do less damage in the short term. But oppose FPTP voting at the same time.

both sides aren't bad.

one side is bad. the other side is a comically evil, fucking nightmare that is going to make sure all future generations for the foreseeable future will suffer things that can be avoided by voting for the "bad" side.

don't be stupid. one side is banning abortion, is going to go after simple contraceptives next, and will certainly ban gay marriage as soon as possible. their obsession with trans people is just a foot in the door.

And to say bOtHsIdEsSaMe you have to simplify to the point of stupidity to try to equate them. There's no detail or nuance. The world is a million shades of grey but they can only see black or white.

100% true. "Both sides" arguments exist SOLELY to deflect from awful things done by Republicans, or detract from positive things done by Democrats.

Not once have I seen it deployed for any other purpose.

Edit for the pedants: I should probably have not led with "100% true" before the sentence where I clearly stated my position. Although I think the delta between what I wrote after that and what is in OP is a difference without a distinction, if some of you want to feel like you really got me, you go right ahead.

Absolutely correct. And when you see them here on lemmy, and there are a TON of them suggesting not to vote-

CALL THEM OUT.

I would LOVE to see a movement form to start pushing these bad actors out of here.

Don't forget, Trump said if minorities vote, Republicans will never win another election. Republicans are doing what they can to stay in power and make it harder for people to vote.

Vote.

And vote down-ticket. Your local elections are far more important than the presidency.

Both sides are bad, votes third party.

But both sides ARE bad. Still, go vote.

It's ok to be critical of our politicians regardless of which "team" they're on. We should all be holding their feet to the fire every day.

I don't want to be the guy that advocates for violence, but...

I can't understand, in a country so full of guns, that kids are doing active shooter drills in elementary, politicians are not afraid of just getting a bullet to the head for being shitheads. What are your guns for if they don't serve for the purpose of defending your country from internal threats to democracy. You just have them to kill poor people and minorities or other defenseless people?

Any other country with that free access to high quality guns would have their politicians afraid of just fucking die. Republicans act as they were invulnerable demigods. They have no real consequences, you have to be a real fucker and inept like Trump to not even attempt to hide your wrongdoings and that just gets you a slap in the wrist and you still run for president. And don't get me started about the democrats that are just blue republicans and you have to suck it up.

Again, violence it's not a first choice for anyone, but how much are you going to withstand before realizing this? Every social victory against class oppression was done through some level of violence against the oppressors, because the status quo dictated they were right and deserved protection from the state, and the oppressed were the ones that got it wrong. You have corporations legally bribing your lawmakers, you even call it lobbying. Corporations are buying your houses, and the little stuff you still have is being taken away from your hands. The SCOTUS takes bribes and has a clearly biased agenda. You don't even have a fucking justice system that's impartial anymore. You can't just vote that stuff out. Sure, vote Biden now, but don't sit in your houses for another 4 years hoping for fascist to not take over your country the next time. Take actions, real actions. Take the streets, punch nazis, and hold politicians and corporations accountable. Give them some fucking consequences.

Plus they cherry-pick items, take them out of context, distort them, then bombard social media with it in a way that tries to push as many visceral buttons as they can.

All the while actively ignoring any and all information that might challenge the narrative they are cynically pushing, of course.

It's probably damn near impossible to fully disentangle oneself from this addictive web, we all have fallen prey to weaponized disinformation at some level or other, and different disinformation campaigns target different segments of the population.

"both sides" arguments exist to remind us that neither is our friend. Yes, there are clear differences between the two, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that one is the "good guys" and ones some unfathomable evil entity.

Neither side is my friend, and I aim to remember that. It doesn't mean I'm going to not vote. It doesn't mean I'm going to encourage others to not vote. It's simply an expression of "I am voting now under duress. None of these options appeals to me, but I must participate in the system lest I be consumed by it."

<rant>

I watched this standup special (Chad Daniels) and I found myself getting annoyed at the premise of most of his jokes.

The premise is that there is a far left and a far right and both sides are bad and need to move closer to the middle.

A joke he made, for instance, boiled down to far right were racists while the far left is overly compassionate to living things. See, both sides are bad!

First, his far right example was not an exaggeration. That is literally how people on the far right think. The far left example was a funny exaggeration that almost nobody on the left believes.

Second, even with his exaggeration, the 2 extremes are in no way equivalently extreme. The far right needs to come over significantly before it is equally extreme as the far left.

Anyway, I felt like this whole special was an example of what is wrong with the way society talks about the right and left.

I made a graph:

FL—-——|M|—————————————-FR

</rant>

Both sides are bad. But vote anyway.

In politics all parties are bad, each in their own unique way. It's just that they can be bad to vastly differing degrees.

Unfortunately lots of people struggle with continuums and see only black and white.

Republicans have argued, under oath, that high voter turnout is unfair for their electoral chances.

Eliminating the First Past the Post voting system would enable people to vote for third-party candidates without the risk of a spoiler effect. This change would foster competition in the electoral process, enhancing the quality of candidates for all voters. Additionally, it would likely increase voter turnout and political engagement.

Electoral reform is possible at the state level, Alaska and Maine have already passed electoral reform so it is possible to get this done.

Republicans have already made moves to protect First Past the Post voting. Florida recently made Ranked Choice voting illegal. Fortunately there are many alternatives to FPTP, so the ban still isn't in the way of passing electoral reform.

So the question remains, why do Blue states still use FPTP voting? Why would you want to use the voting system republicans prefer? There are no republicans stopping these reforms in states that democrats control.

It is clear that democrats understand the flaws of FPTP voting, just talk about voting third party in nearly any social media and you will get a entire flock of Democrats lecturing you on how a vote not for a democrat is a vote for a republican. How can you admit the voting system is flawed and then not make any moves to rectify the situation is beyond me. You don't get to lecture people on the flaws of FPTP voting and then do nothing to fix the issue.

I'm going to vote for the democrat this November but I think most folks who talk about this issue are not disingenuous. Voting in the presidential election is a bare minimum, minimally effective political action. For me and most of the people I know it matters almost not at all because I don't live in a swing state. My local elections matter a hell of a lot more.

There are limits to the effectiveness of electoralism that are worth understanding. I think a lot of folks who talk about the Democrat's failures are advocating for political action beyond voting. Direct action is a far more effective form of political action that people should be putting their energies into.

Union organizing, renter's orgs, housing activism, talking to your neighbors, local politics, and lots more are much more effective ways to assert power in your life. Voting makes me feel helpless. We need to act as well. The primary thing preventing positive political change is the belief that we can't do anything to bring that change about.

But what if I don't want a typical Democrat in office either?

I just want one election in my life where it's not the end of the goddamn world if Democrats lose, so I'm allowed to vote for someone I actually like.

Just one fucking election.

The intent of someone's speech, or even its outcome, does not make it incorrect. A culture of hiding from reality thinking in doing so it will give us certain outcomes is what this practice will create.

Bro vote democrat this time. I'm sure next elections the republican candidate will be better when they inevitably win. I'm sure the democrat candidate will be better too, bro, I swear, just vote. The spiral towards right wing because of the recurring "lesser evil vote" will get better bro I swear.

Then they better get started earning those votes

Both sides are bad

It's jut that one is kinda great with a bunch of bad things, the other is a pineapple up your ass nightmare shitshow.

Which one to choose, choices choices choices...

Get involved locally and build from there. Under 60? You'll be the youngest there in a lot of Democratic clubs.

You should definitely vote, at a minimum. But if you want real change, you need direct action.

Hey France has a lesson for you: 2 years ago the liberals called the left to vote for them in order to prevent the far right from getting elected.

For 2 years the liberals governed with the leaning to far right - right. The far right applauded many of their policies.

This Sunday the far right went first in the European election, because the left was a bunch of clowns and everyone hates the liberal government.

1h after the results, the Liberal president Macron disbanded the parliament. Now there are 3 weeks to elect a new parliament. He also opted for a vote that favors the biggest, so the far right is favoured, and there's no time for a campaign and barely enough time for the left to unite. The president is also still saying on TV that the left is just as bad and as extreme as the far right.

We didn't see it coming, but the liberal who pretended he would fight the far right is the first accelerationist in France. It is chaos right now, and the far right has never been so close from being in power in France since 1944. The 5th Republic is almost a presidential regime btw, so if the far right has the power, it'll be very dirty.

Trust the liberals they said, it's better than the far right...

You need to do more than merely vote

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Just remember, people: the US is always one election away from sudden, irrevocable demise. But if you elect the conservative with a D next to their name, then America gets to continue its slow, but inexorable socioeconomic decline as the executive and legislative representatives continue to ignore the policies of the progressives who held their nose to keep them in power. Asking for anything more is both foolish and, even worse, selfish.

As a conservative democrat myself, who will never be forced to compromise any of my ideological positions because the status quo of every election being "too important to lose" is at this point part of the core design of our two party political system, I can say with confidence that if I were ever faced with the choice of voting between an outright fascist and a socialist candidate, that I would definitely vote the only way that made sense to preserve the corporate oligarchy on which the fragile veneer of American democracy rests. Which is to say that I would vote for the fascist, obviously.

If you want to actually vote for progressive candidates, then you are free to move to Mexico and start farming avocados for the cartels.

Oh, they see the connection. They just want Republicans in office. They don't give a fuck about the suffering of minorities, they just want the worst possible option in power so they can feel smug about "not supporting the system".

I say that and mean it. Still going to vote for that twat biden. He is a better choice than our low grade hitler wanna be trump.

Both sides* are bad

Actually they are designed to make people vote third party. Critical voter mass moving to third party is the only option to end the duopoly political system that literally everybody agrees is bad and undemocratic.

Gas lighting people into believing there is only 2 choices when there isnt is how this corrupt system maintains its power.

No. They have plenty of voters. I'm so tired of this liberal bashing of people with fucking empathy and a tired deposition towards the apathetic unhelpful political parties in charge, as your way to get more votes.

I get that we have a binary decision with our presidency election but no, this is not an effective method other than to piss off people you are essentially stating straight up you think of as lesser.

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Representative democracy is hard.

get f*ked. George carlin applies.

Do you want your Brussels sprouts boiled or steamed?

We're like children getting tricked by our parents into making a choice we didn't want.

Yeah well neither is your friend. Both consistently take away your rights and give you barley anything. You can say both are bad but one is worse, sure.

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Why would I want Moloch when the other option is Baal?

Both sides are bad. that's factually correct information

votes 3rd party

Nah i encourage people to vote for a better candidate

this is the biggest, most obvious chance to shift the democrats towards the left in decades, all you gotta do to show them that y’all won’t support genocide is vote third party just enough to give the third parties 10% of the vote and then let all the media run wild with the idea that neither of the party has approval

and y’all will still vote for an old genocidal white guy just as long as there’s a slightly worse alternative? isn’t that just incentive for the democrats to be slightly worse than worst? won’t that just push the overton window to the right?

voting anything other than third party is complicity with genocide

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If you’re making a both sides bad post, be sure to suggest that people vote for a third party, got it!

Btw, have you heard about the party for socialism and liberation? They’re running Claudia de la Cruz for president on a platform of Palestinian liberation and stopping weapons shipments to Israel!

That's an hyper-simplist take, self-serving if the author is a Democrat tribalist.

A Biden victory will have two effects:

• It solves the Trump problem for the next 4 years.
• It makes the DNC conclude that even outright support by their sitting President and Candidate with weapons and ammunition for a Fascist regime committing Genocide along ethnic lines is not an impediment for lefties to vote for a DNC nominated Democrat Presidential Candidate as long as the other side's candidate is worse. This means that in the next election the next Democrat candidate is unlikelly to be better and will possibly be worse. It also doesn't solve the problem of a somebody-like-Trump or, worse, an intelligent version of Trump, being a candidate with a chance of winning in subsequent elections.

So what's at stake is a Trump victory now (what Trump might or not do once in power is mainly speculation, and the more extreme theories being pitched by people who stand to gain if their candidate wins instead of Trump, have to be taken with a pinch because they'se self-serving political propaganda) versus what will happen in subsequent elections.

(The whole "what might Trump do" uncertainty is what actually makes the whole thing a complex and trully fucked up choice: if one knew with absolute certainty that Trump would end even the flawed thing that passes for Democracy in America, the choice would be an obvious "vote Biden" even at the risk of there only be even worse choices in subsequent elections, because if Trump won now there would be no subsequent elections).

Frankly I don't see any scenario were post-Trump the Republicans become less Fascist and hence the DNC becoming less evil because their upper evilness limit which is "the other guy" gets pushed down, and suspect that who the Republicans will put forward next is a more intelligent version of Trump.

That being so, the only way to push the DNC to in the future put forward less evil candidates (or to not intervene in the Primaries to stop such candidates, like they did to stop Sanders) is to make them fear that they will lose the leftwing vote and hence never again win Presidential elections, and that means Biden has to lose and Trump has to win.

It's a fucking tough choice. (Sorry for the expeletive, but it's what better reflects the trully, utterly fucked up nature of the whole "choice")

I'm happy I'm not an American and am not forced into such Hobson's Choice and can thus just intellectually analyse the whole thing without an associated rollercoaster of emotions.

Ah got it so we need to be like Trump's base and ignore any problems Biden has because that encourages people not to vote. /s

You can call out problems with Biden and acknowledge how that is gonna make left leaning people not want to vote for him and average people not care enough to go out and vote at all without supporting not voting for him.

Seriously this sounds like some fucking 2 party propaganda bullshit. we out number them by millions, it really shouldn't be that hard get what we want. It makes me laugh when people think they have a choice in this system. Your voting for 2 evils doesnt matter if one is lesser they are still evil and a vote for either of them is saying you are OK with evil. Only reason no vote or another candidate is not viable is because of people like you falling for their tricks.

Guys, when is the revolution? I wanna burn down every government building and start from scratch. I don't think Americans will be happy whether Biden or Trump is voted in, so we might as well fight both sides and uprise a new one

The "vote democrat to save democracy, you must vote one party, .. for democracy" seems like Orwellian doublespeak at this point, because if you look at the numbers, democracy is about to be heavily eroded over time by the democrats. I'm not even registered to vote, but it's obvious to see the tactics being pushed and enacted.

??? "Keeping people from voting is literally the only way Republicans can stay in office" is just such an objectively false statement I don't know where to start.

Well, that...and the electoral college. When states that have fewer people living in them than one or two major blue cities...it really helps virtually nullify the votes of large swathes of the population.

I'm gonna vote Republican because you assholes just insist on sock puppets. Remember, not voting is a vote for Biden!

Just vote third party, if both options are bad, literally the only thing keeping this two(more like one) party system alive and keeping real progress from happening.

Both sides ARE bad. A revolution is America's only chance for a decent future.

Horseshit

Well, here goes:

If you don’t want to vote for Biden or trump, don’t. I’m voting party for socialism and liberation this November and you can too.

They’re running Claudia de la cruz for president on a platform of Palestinian statehood and cessation of aid to Israel.

It’s better to vote third party than not to vote because even if the third party doesn’t win, they get material support from your vote in the form of funding, ballot and event presence, media appearances and public awareness.

Boy this rhetoric sounds familiar. “Democracy is under attack by Republicans”. Oh right, it’s the exact same goddamn thing Democrats have been saying for the last 15 years. And yet even though they’ve been in power a significant part of that time, somehow we keep inching towards fascism.

At some point you realize that the only real question is do we want fascism next week, or do we want fascism next month? And while I agree that voting for Drumpf is a much worse choice for the country, maybe if Democrats actually did stuff to make every day citizens lives better then maybe it really wouldn’t be much of an argument.

do you have any evidence for this claim?

The truth hurts. Democrats cry. Vote third party and taste the tears.

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You do realize that you can vote third party and they maybe better aligned with your values?

The only people taking people’s power away are those telling us that we have to choose between the candidates we don’t like and ignore the ones that we do agree with.

I as an Arab American will not vote for someone enabling the death and destruction of my people. Call us Russian trolls all you want.

Nah, some of us just aren't delusional and see how both sides are ineffective, ignore their constituents, corrupt(look at the stock trading of any politician for an example), and a whole host of other problems. Some of us want a party we can actually support, not just "the lesser of two evils". Itd be nice to have a candidate that you actually want to vote for on their own merits.

But nah, just paint us as whiny conservatives trying to trick you, not your fellow Democrats who are fed up with the shit show we've been fed our entire lives. This is one of the most pathetic Democrat Defenses: "if you don't agree with us, you're really a smelly conservative!". Nah, I just don't agree that you have the ability or desire to actually make things better. And I'm not gonna keep a broken system on life support just for your comfort. I WANT the system to collapse because it's already a mockery of what it should be. If it collapses, we either go full authoritarian and stop pretending we're not(so at least we're finally honest), or maybe, just maybe, a different voice can rise up for once.

Either way, better than voting for Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich and continuing the same broken system for another 100 years.

For all the people down voting me, does the following sound familiar? "Election happens. Told Vote D or a R wins and everything will be worse! Elect a D. They can't get anything done because the Rs prevent them. Rs proceed to win next election and completely change major laws on a whim. Ds continue to complain that they can't stop the Rs". So why would I vote for a party that openly admits they can't get shit done? The entire Democrat playbook is "The Republicans wouldn't let us". Fuck that bullshit. If you can't see it for the scam it is, you deserve this bullshit. It's a party of eunichs. It needs to die and be replaced with an actually progressive party, not another shade of R.

People really think that voting for a person they never met in person will change their lives for the better

Ah, I see, we've come from "vote for the lesser evil" to "anyone claiming that the democrats are bad is on Putin's/the Repuplican's payroll".

Or how else should we interpret that "specifically designed" part?

Yeah, liberals... keep pretending that your superficial pearl-clutching when it comes to US-sponsored genocide makes you all that different than your (so-called) "conservative" cousins.

"If you want things to improve you are literally a fascist" - A neoliberal guide to democracy

If you don't see how people are unable to vote for a Democratic party that is shamelessly supporting genocide you have a problem.

Regardless of whether or not you are ok with actively voting for a staunch genocide supporter, you should be able to intellectually understand why people can't approve the Democratic party's unconditional genocide support.